Process > Results
Top of the morning or whatever it is where you’re reading this. Fun fact, this newsletter seems to more engaging when people read it in the morning.
Maybe it’s that we’re still kicking our brain into gear so the lateral approach works well.
If that’s true, let’s get started:
A truck driver who is going south on a one-way street that goes north is spotted by a police officer.
Somehow, he doesn’t get a ticket.
What happened?
An answer, as usual, at the end.
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Judge the process, not the result
Today’s little rant is inspired from a recent Tim Ferriss podcast episode (here’s the transcript as I sometimes find that easier to skim through).
You’ll hear me quoting episodes from Tim (and others) often, but I try to make them bite sized, let me know if you like this approach.
Out of many ideas discussed, one that stuck with me was that we should be rewarding a good process, not just the good outcome.
That’s because you can have a good outcome with a shitty process. Because in anything, there’s always a (significant) stroke a luck and context that you’re not able to account for.
However, anyone can learn from a good process and if they try enough, they’re bound to find success.
Controversial statement incoming:
Musk has a horrible process. He burns investor money and keeps underdelivering on a lot of his public promises (the kickoff of the Hyperloop project in Vegas is a good example). Regardless, his outcomes are exceptional, if not downright brilliant. Because of that, people often excuse his ways of doing things.
By comparison, Bezos has a brilliant process. He was able to slowly build up one of the largest companies in the world, stay ahead of the competition without sacrificing development, manage stakeholders extremely well and build a team that is now producing hits on multiple levels (gaming, movies, retail).
Neither of them are perfect. However, for an average person, you have a way higher chance to succeed if you follow a process similar to Bezos. If you follow Musk’s, you’re extremely likely to fail miserably.
This applies to most fields: building businesses, teams, personal development, sports, personal relationships, you name it.
We tend to listen to people just because they succeeded, but there’s no guarantee that they succeeded because of their process or despite it.
What if they had the right combination of background, timing and resources and would have most likely succeeded regardless of their approach?
Food for thought - but I think we’ll all be better off if we pay more attention to method behind the madness.
Answer: the truck driver was walking on the sidewalk.